Oude Geuze wrote:In Norway, the skiers are the top athletes in the country, it’s where all the money and fame is. Norwegian skier Kristin Stormer Steria won the national 10k track championship with minimal specialized training. In the rest of the world it would be the other way around.

Well, that just might mean they have bad track athletes.

Anyway you are not right, in Czech republic there xc skier is beating track runners too.

Yeah, they’re pretty bad, because the good athletes are skiers.

Czech Republic skier won the national championship in track and field? Which skier, which event? Link? Not that I don’t believe you, but they’re not exactly dominating skiing lately, Lukas Bauer still the best at 39 or something.

«Sky helped for the GC, so did BMC - a lot of teams tried but one rider isn't enough. Not against De Gendt. He's like 10 riders.»

Oude Geuze wrote:In Norway, the skiers are the top athletes in the country, it’s where all the money and fame is. Norwegian skier Kristin Stormer Steria won the national 10k track championship with minimal specialized training. In the rest of the world it would be the other way around.

Well, that just might mean they have bad track athletes.

Anyway you are not right, in Czech republic there xc skier is beating track runners too.

Czech Republic skier won the national championship in track and field? Which skier, which event? Link? Not that I don’t believe you, but they’re not exactly dominating skiing lately, Lukas Bauer still the best at 39 or something.

Eva Vrabcová - Nývltová.

"Yeah, they’re pretty bad, because the good athletes are skiers." Well, if runners are bad, what exactly did you want to say by that?

now one of their present national team coaches (!) accused chernusov of being an anonymous informant for wada

i can fully imagine the rodchenkov's drive (including some personal experience with the scoundrel) but chernusov ?

even if one makes an allowance for him selfishly wanting the olympic gold AFTER vyleg and lego were DQ-ed, it does not jive with several considerations. like if it was a team-wide doping, cherno as one of their strongest assets would have also been 'found'. or it does not connect with how he and vyleg lifted lego into the air soon after alex won the sochi gold. besides, him and lego were known to have a close personal friendship before and particularly during their work with reto and isabel.

but nowadays one cant be sure in anything. particularly b/c cherno fits a different mold from the rest of their team. he is married to a swiss, speaks fluent english and solid german, does not live in russia and even looks more like a sicilian with his dark complexion than a typical blue-eyed russian ....ratting or not, i have a good opinion of cherno as an athlete and a person.

DJPbaltimore:'John Kerry is an honorable person and would not call out the Russians if there was not evidence', 'the 2 of you are russia stooges'in foreign policy there are no eternal friendships or eternal enemies, only eternal interests

now one of their present national team coaches (!) accused chernusov of being an anonymous informant for wada

i can fully imagine the rodchenkov's drive (including some personal experience with the scoundrel) but chernusov ?

even if one makes an allowance for him selfishly wanting the olympic gold AFTER vyleg and lego were DQ-ed, it does not jive with several considerations. like if it was a team-wide doping, cherno as one of their strongest assets would have also been 'found'. or it does not connect with how he and vyleg lifted lego into the air soon after alex won the sochi gold. besides, him and lego were known to have a close personal friendship before and particularly during their work with reto and isabel.

but nowadays one cant be sure in anything. particularly b/c cherno fits a different mold from the rest of their team. he is married to a swiss, speaks fluent english and solid german, does not live in russia and even looks more like a sicilian with his dark complexion than a typical blue-eyed russian ....ratting or not, i have a good opinion of cherno as an athlete and a person.

Rodchenkov is a scoundrel, of that there is no doubt. I think he's been planning this on for a while, otherwise he wouldn't have moved to the States. Interesting how he says that organized doping started in 2011 and ended in 2015...In 2011 he moved to the states, in 2015 he officially moved out of Russia and he was in contact with other scoundrels like McLaren and Seppelt all that time. I mean, I can see McLaren's involvement, he is a lawyer working for WADA, and most of WADA's high ranking officials are hellbent on preventing Russia competing in the Olympics. Seppelt is a journalist with an agenda. Rodchenkov had beef with others within Russia. Him saying whatever McLaren, Seppelt, Tygart, etc want to hear is predictable.

As far as Chernousov is concerned, I agree that I don't see him as an 'informant,' though I guess there are rumblings about potential informants giving WADA information. I don't see Ilia as a person that would give away anything, and what was there to give away? In the latest IOC decision, nothing new or concrete was laid out. They didn't say anything, only that Legkov, Vylegzhanin, etc were 'guilty' of doping. They don't actually have proof, it's all based on one scoundrel's story. One man talks, and WADA, IOC and FIS believe him, without fact checking, other witnesses, etc. Impressive. No wonder jails (particularly in the US) are overfilled and innocent individuals put behind bars, it's because the judiciary system is becoming a joke. Is it now 'guilty until proven innocent?'

And Chernousov was training with Legkov since 2010. Same training plans, same coaches (foreigners), traveling to the same venues, outside of the Russian national team to Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Germany, Austria...How is Chernousov not named and Legkov is? Is it because he actually is married to a Swiss, lives in Switzerland now? Is that WADA's pre-requisite?

What about other skiers? Ustiugov is not targeted (so far). Did Rodchenkov not think much of him in 2014? If he were to make that list in 2017, would he put Sergey's name on the sheet? I don't see how 'if' there was mass doping, how some doped and some didn't, or some knew of things going on, but others didn't. I don't know, perhaps they didn't see Ustiugov as a medal threat OR they felt he was SO GOOD that he didn't need dope. Either way, it's a joke.

Oude Geuze wrote:In Norway, the skiers are the top athletes in the country, it’s where all the money and fame is. Norwegian skier Kristin Stormer Steria won the national 10k track championship with minimal specialized training. In the rest of the world it would be the other way around.

Well, that just might mean they have bad track athletes.

Anyway you are not right, in Czech republic there xc skier is beating track runners too.

Czech Republic skier won the national championship in track and field? Which skier, which event? Link? Not that I don’t believe you, but they’re not exactly dominating skiing lately, Lukas Bauer still the best at 39 or something.

Eva Vrabcová - Nývltová.

"Yeah, they’re pretty bad, because the good athletes are skiers." Well, if runners are bad, what exactly did you want to say by that?

Trolling or serious? The good athletes are skiers, the next best are track and field, hence, the skiers sometimes win track and field with little specialized training. I think that’s quite clear?

I couldn’t find much about Eva Vrabcová-Nývltová other than the fact that she is a b-tier skier and a marathon runner, couldn’t find any national championship wins in either discipline, link?

«Sky helped for the GC, so did BMC - a lot of teams tried but one rider isn't enough. Not against De Gendt. He's like 10 riders.»

Funny how the Russians are afforded such credulity here, the most infamous and documented cheaters in the world since the 60’s. Meanwhile, any other country would be absolutely thrashed with similar accusations. I realize that supporting a minority narrative is the edgy choice, but there’s no reason to protect a corrupt system.

«Sky helped for the GC, so did BMC - a lot of teams tried but one rider isn't enough. Not against De Gendt. He's like 10 riders.»

he was allowed destroying the word's best, wracking up points, prizes and whatnot while apparently being investigated for doping in absolute secrecy. not a ferking peep leaked !! later, when the entire norwegian spin machine went in an overdrive telling us that noone ever had anything to hide, our poor and humble martin (probably after a major constipation) was quoted that he regretted being so secretive then

i mean, as we know from cycling and other endurance sports, such things as Vo2 max, w/kg at AT etc are not an everyday printout. many athletes and their coaches (not just sky and froome) release such private data when they need to manipulate, massage, intimidate or otherwise deflect from some other underlying cause.

not always, but more often than not it is to deflect doping. i just wonder why this not very long ago secretive dude has suddenly become a model of transparency ? reminds me his other transformation from an arrogant prick into a humble mortal after his doping was found out...

DJPbaltimore:'John Kerry is an honorable person and would not call out the Russians if there was not evidence', 'the 2 of you are russia stooges'in foreign policy there are no eternal friendships or eternal enemies, only eternal interests

he was allowed destroying the word's best, wracking up points, prizes and whatnot while apparently being investigated for doping in absolute secrecy. not a ferking peep leaked !! later, when the entire norwegian spin machine went in an overdrive telling us that noone ever had anything to hide, our poor and humble martin (probably after a major constipation) was quoted that he regretted being so secretive then

i mean, as we know from cycling and other endurance sports, such things as Vo2 max, w/kg at AT etc are not an everyday printout. many athletes and their coaches (not just sky and froome) release such private data when they need to manipulate, massage, intimidate or otherwise deflect from some other underlying cause.

not always, but more often than not it is to deflect doping. i just wonder why this not very long ago secretive dude has suddenly become a model of transparency ? reminds me his other transformation from an arrogant prick into a humble mortal after his doping was found out...

he was allowed destroying the word's best, wracking up points, prizes and whatnot while apparently being investigated for doping in absolute secrecy. not a ferking peep leaked !! later, when the entire norwegian spin machine went in an overdrive telling us that noone ever had anything to hide, our poor and humble martin (probably after a major constipation) was quoted that he regretted being so secretive then

i mean, as we know from cycling and other endurance sports, such things as Vo2 max, w/kg at AT etc are not an everyday printout. many athletes and their coaches (not just sky and froome) release such private data when they need to manipulate, massage, intimidate or otherwise deflect from some other underlying cause.

not always, but more often than not it is to deflect doping. i just wonder why this not very long ago secretive dude has suddenly become a model of transparency ? reminds me his other transformation from an arrogant prick into a humble mortal after his doping was found out...

Interesting. So Sundby's oxygen consumption at "critical power", ie. efforts sustainable for 30-45min in elite athletes, would be at least around 77-75ml/kg/min. If his max is 83ml/kg/min, that is some fractional utilization rate of vo2max at critical power!

As the utilization rate is likely to be harder to measure and less well known amongst the public & sporting media, my guess is that this simply allows for greater room to spin a freak of nature narrative of some sort. Neat.

Boycotting the entire russian squad is not ideal, but I think that when the problem is systemic and endemic like it has proven to be time and again amongst russian athletes, trainers and government, there might not be another way. It seems implausible that there would be clean russian athletes in the Sochi olympics at this point. Of course, if possible, they should investigate each case individually and not do a blanket ban.

«Sky helped for the GC, so did BMC - a lot of teams tried but one rider isn't enough. Not against De Gendt. He's like 10 riders.»

Oude Geuze wrote:Boycotting the entire russian squad is not ideal, but I think that when the problem is systemic and endemic like it has proven to be time and again amongst russian athletes, trainers and government, there might not be another way. It seems implausible that there would be clean russian athletes in the Sochi olympics at this point. Of course, if possible, they should investigate each case individually and not do a blanket ban.

It hans't been proven. It's all based off of ONE man currently living in California and has been since 2015. Could you imagine the world functioning like that? I suspect my neighbor of stealing, I can't prove it, but here is my written statement, but I hate him so much...he must be guilty! Police: Yep! You hate him alright! That's good enough for us. Thanks for the evidence! Boom...here's your prison sentence bad neighbor...

Anyway it's always funny to see the Norwegians harping about others, but somehow they are ALWAYS clean, because, you know, they invented skiing, it's a national sport, have the best grinds, training, blah, blah, blah....What, you think Bjoern Daehlie, Thomas Alsgaard, Bente Skari, Vegard Ulvang, Marit Bjoergen, etc are clean, beating all those doped Russians, Finns, Austrians, Germans, Czechs and whoever else you want to put in there...?

Oude Geuze wrote:Boycotting the entire russian squad is not ideal, but I think that when the problem is systemic and endemic like it has proven to be time and again amongst russian athletes, trainers and government, there might not be another way. It seems implausible that there would be clean russian athletes in the Sochi olympics at this point. Of course, if possible, they should investigate each case individually and not do a blanket ban.

You mean like they already have been doing on the biathlon? The problem with that is more the time it will take, in relation to Pyeongchang. A couple of cases are cut-and-dried but the athletes have already served their sanctions (Loginov) while other athletes are retired, which makes sanctioning the individual athletes of little value. IIRC with the biathletes, they had said 22 of 32 athletes have either been cleared or have already been sanctioned for the offences noted in the report (Starykh, Iourieva, Loginov), 3 are suspended (Romanova, Vilukhina, Glazyrina) and so there's only 7 remaining under investigation. The most interesting case will be Timofey Lapshin, he's mentioned in the docs but he isn't representing Russia anymore, having transferred to South Korea last season. Would the hosts risk having an athlete yanked mid-Games though, even if they can then dismiss him as an opportunist ex-Russian?

The problem is, the numbers are big, but if you dig deeper into what the report says, it's far from conclusive that the team or individuals themselves were doping. They may well have been, but conclusive evidence that would stand up enough to ban them is difficult. Some athletes are included whose only sin as far as the tests are concerned was to be tested as part of a group on a day when some of the tests went missing, so they may have benefited from the system - some of these at smaller events or team camps may have been conscious dry runs for Sochi, some of these may have been overly cautious handling of samples that wouldn't have tripped the wire in response to the Starykh and Iourieva positives, and so defining which of the athletes were expressly in on the deceit and which were not could be a process far too arduous to get everybody's case considered before Pyeongchang. I don't favour the nuclear option of banning the team from competing, as I can readily imagine that unless individual athletes are sanctioned, most of them could do as Lapshin has done and find another nation willing to take them on in order to continue to compete - there are already myriad Russian-born athletes competing for Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and even Sweden - which both fails to sanction the individual cheats and also both hamstrings athletes from other nations from the chance to compete at the top level, and any potentially clean athletes from Russia from the chance to represent their country.

Oude Geuze wrote:Boycotting the entire russian squad is not ideal, but I think that when the problem is systemic and endemic like it has proven to be time and again amongst russian athletes, trainers and government, there might not be another way. It seems implausible that there would be clean russian athletes in the Sochi olympics at this point. Of course, if possible, they should investigate each case individually and not do a blanket ban.

You mean like they already have been doing on the biathlon? The problem with that is more the time it will take, in relation to Pyeongchang. A couple of cases are cut-and-dried but the athletes have already served their sanctions (Loginov) while other athletes are retired, which makes sanctioning the individual athletes of little value. IIRC with the biathletes, they had said 22 of 32 athletes have either been cleared or have already been sanctioned for the offences noted in the report (Starykh, Iourieva, Loginov), 3 are suspended (Romanova, Vilukhina, Glazyrina) and so there's only 7 remaining under investigation. The most interesting case will be Timofey Lapshin, he's mentioned in the docs but he isn't representing Russia anymore, having transferred to South Korea last season. Would the hosts risk having an athlete yanked mid-Games though, even if they can then dismiss him as an opportunist ex-Russian?

The problem is, the numbers are big, but if you dig deeper into what the report says, it's far from conclusive that the team or individuals themselves were doping. They may well have been, but conclusive evidence that would stand up enough to ban them is difficult. Some athletes are included whose only sin as far as the tests are concerned was to be tested as part of a group on a day when some of the tests went missing, so they may have benefited from the system - some of these at smaller events or team camps may have been conscious dry runs for Sochi, some of these may have been overly cautious handling of samples that wouldn't have tripped the wire in response to the Starykh and Iourieva positives, and so defining which of the athletes were expressly in on the deceit and which were not could be a process far too arduous to get everybody's case considered before Pyeongchang. I don't favour the nuclear option of banning the team from competing, as I can readily imagine that unless individual athletes are sanctioned, most of them could do as Lapshin has done and find another nation willing to take them on in order to continue to compete - there are already myriad Russian-born athletes competing for Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and even Sweden - which both fails to sanction the individual cheats and also both hamstrings athletes from other nations from the chance to compete at the top level, and any potentially clean athletes from Russia from the chance to represent their country.

Plus the IBU needs Russia to compete. There are always Russian sponsors in biathlon, the fans from that country come in big numbers in other countries: Scandinavia, Finland, Germany and Austria...the Tyumen facility is huge from what I have seen, and they've held the 'Champions Race' in April a few times already (Fourcade, Bjoerndalen, Northug, Wierer, Boe brothers, etc have all come at one or more editions), the viewership is big in Russia, so the IBU would be losing a ton fans...

FIS won't lose as much if the Russians are not competing, but the effects will still be felt. I think both the IBU and FIS are reluctant, for the most part, to give a blanket ban, but this time around, especially with 6 of the XC skiers not allowed to compete in Korea (CAS already ruled they are free to compete post nov 1 if no new evidence was found...) it could be a real possibility, plus, as I mentioned already, politics is playing a stronger role. The North Americans are yapping even more. The Europeans are generally more quiet, more modest, but that's to be expected. Anyway, as you say, there simply isn't conclusive evidence of doping, or tampering or whatever the problem was that McLaren tried and is still tying to manufacture, but there is some serious anti-Russian sentiment led by the US on all fronts and it's putting FIS and the IBU's feet to the fire.

Some very interesting words from Wassberg, Sundby, and Krogh. Not necessarily defending the Russians, but a very diplomatic and reasonable comments.

Oude Geuze wrote:Boycotting the entire [nation] squad is not ideal, but I think that when the problem is systemic and endemic like it has proven to be time and again amongst [nation] athletes, trainers and government, there might not be another way.

Oude Geuze wrote:In Norway, the skiers are the top athletes in the country, it’s where all the money and fame is. Norwegian skier Kristin Stormer Steria won the national 10k track championship with minimal specialized training. In the rest of the world it would be the other way around.

Well, that just might mean they have bad track athletes.

Anyway you are not right, in Czech republic there xc skier is beating track runners too.

Czech Republic skier won the national championship in track and field? Which skier, which event? Link? Not that I don’t believe you, but they’re not exactly dominating skiing lately, Lukas Bauer still the best at 39 or something.

Eva Vrabcová - Nývltová.

"Yeah, they’re pretty bad, because the good athletes are skiers." Well, if runners are bad, what exactly did you want to say by that?

Trolling or serious? The good athletes are skiers, the next best are track and field, hence, the skiers sometimes win track and field with little specialized training. I think that’s quite clear?

I couldn’t find much about Eva Vrabcová-Nývltová other than the fact that she is a b-tier skier and a marathon runner, couldn’t find any national championship wins in either discipline, link?

No trolling. I mean what did you want to say by that in the context of VO2max. debate, that really is not clear.

Eva Vrabcová is best half-marathon and marathon runner (in Czech republic) and that is track and field.

It is all apparent that Sundby along w the doped Russians is a very suspicious case. Further, Cologna, Johan Olsson and a few others also place in that category while I truly believe in skiers like for example Andets Sodergren. Bjoergen is a special case on its own right. She and Usain Bolt... the two biggest ever?